"The Old Fisherman" painting by Csontvár: mirroring myth and meme, face symmetry, and uncanny valley

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Hi Vitaliy,

Brilliant idea! I know this painting very well, and, until now, had to do this transformation ‘in my head’.

A crucial point on nomenclature: the last name of the painter is Csontváry, not Kosztka. He was born with in the ‘Kosztka’ family, and later adopted ‘Csontváry’ as his artistic surname. (I’m not quite certain about his for the choice; in several Slavic language, ‘kost’ = ‘bone’ = Hungarian ‘csont’. The second part of his name, ‘vár’ = ‘castle’, so ‘Csontváry’ ~ ‘of the castle of bones’.) In any case, he is known as Csontváry throughout the art world, so you should probably change the title and the text accordingly.

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Thank you, Zsombor, I corrected the title. Appreciate the added etymology too - hadn’t realized the ‘castle of bones’ meaning, very interesting.

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a ‘y’ is still missing from the end…

To not appear purely as a spelling authoritarian, I’d add that ‘-i’ and ‘-y’ (pronounced identically) indicates ‘of or from a location’ in Hungarian, and, especially its ‘-y’ form, is a marker of nobility. C.f., the well-known Esterházy family).